Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Guy Fieri Gets Slammed

I’ve written before that I tend to have a love/hate relationship with the Food Network, and it’s starting to move strongly in the hate direction. The network that gave the world Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee (and her Kwanzaa cake) has more recently launched the terrifying career of Guy Fieri, whose new restaurant just got a legendary smackdown from the New York Times food critic.
First of all, the restaurant is in Times Square, which today is little more than the Disney World version of the world’s largest and tackiest strip mall. But Fieri’s new restaurant probably fits in there perfectly if this review is anywhere near the truth:

GUY FIERI, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square? Have you pulled up one of the 500 seats at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar and ordered a meal? Did you eat the food? Did it live up to your expectations?

Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex? When you saw the burger described as “Guy’s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,” did your mind touch the void for a minute? …

Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?

Looks like you had a few problemo-s with the chow, the vibe and the RADitutde of the servers. I get it, buddy. I’m an acquired taste, just like our Chewy Moo-ey Big Beef Bonanaza Burger with Beddar Cheddar EZ Cheeze and Guy’s S.O.G. Fries (Salt, Oil, Grease). Bee-Tee-Double-U, if you order Guy’s S.O.G. Fries make sure you eat ‘em right away. Otherwise they’re like the 1994 Lillyhammer Winter Olympics: too cold!…

Sue me for being positive, New Dork Times! I just want to share a little love, a little rock n’ roll and whole mess a’ easy, greasy, tubby grub with the good people of New York City (But mostly the tourists visiting New York City from what I call the “Guy-ble Belt” (patent pending)). And hey, nobody said you had the eat the food or drink the glowing blue drinks. That’s why we built the gift shop! We got ya covered, kimosabe! Spend your wampum at the Great White Hair’s gift shop, and skip the tummy ache from too much firewater, chief!

You know who Guy Fieri reminds me of? Sports talk show host Jim Rome. They’re both trying so incredibly hard to be hip that it’s just painful and you end up feeling embarrassed for them, even while they’re laughing all the way to the bank.

Guy Fiero relies on Bigwhitehair, all sorts of set decoration that has nothing to do with food and a pastiche of zoomin’ around the countryside and making dishes that are waaaaaaaaaaaaay too clever in his AWESOME FUCKIN’ kitchen.

Fiero is a clueless, one trick douchebag, Jim Rome is nowhere near that good.

Interviewer: when was the last time you remember laughing till you cried — screaming laughing.

Bourdain: Guy Fieri’s tweet that he was on his way to a Nickleback Concert. It was like the funniest fucking thing…’of course! of course!’ My god, seldom have the planets aligned so beautifully, you know, it’s like “I’m stoppin by Johnny Garlics to say hello to my bros and then I’m off to see nickleback” and I was like “no, it can’t be true!” if only he would have also said “and I’m bringing my good friend vanilla ice with me!” and really, my head would have exploded from the perfect planetary alignment of it all.

I’m loving all the Fieri hate, but I feel obliged to offer a semi-defense of Rachel Ray. Her whole shtick is annoying as hell and she is definitely no great chef. However, her recipes are solid, quick things you can make when you’re in a hurry. She’s a million miles ahead of Sandra Lee… but she’s still really annoying.

God, Guy Fieri is the TEXTBOOK definition of “douchenozzle”. And more and more, Food Network marathons his “Divers, Drive-Ins and Dives” in primetime. Ack. Hours of watching that ridiculous little troll shove food into his mouth while wearing his sunglasses on the back of his head as grease and secret sauce run all over the rings on his sausage fingers and drips on that day’s loud, ugly bowling shirt….

Watching any of his shows is the cure for overeating. Hell, it’s the cure for eating period.

You do realize that she doesn’t come up with those recipes, right? They have the whole Food Network kitchen staff to do that and then tell her to cook it. Or they actually buy recipes from people who send them in (that’s how Sandra Lee’s infamous Kwanzaa cake came about).

Guy Fieri is that plump, but not fat, bleach-headed modern day good ol’ boy who hangs out at the Applebee’s bar every Friday night. He has never accomplished anything of note, good or bad, other than his aggressive misuse of hair product and cologne. He drinks light beer and chats up the same waitress then he slinks home and masturbates drunkenly into a sock.

I have to say, for all I hate Fieri’s cooking show, cookbooks, and general being, I do like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. The variety and characters of the restaurants is fascinating, Fieri’s goofy-ass character is good at interacting with people, but he actually knows how to step back and let the cooks have the spotlight. That said, I wouldn’t eat at his own restaurant if you paid me.

edmundog:
We agree on something else.
I like DDD for the restaurants. I don’t know that I’ll ever go to any of them, but I find the locations for some-or the menus for others-to be interesting. Of course the show doesn’t benefit having Guy there. You could replace him with anyone and I’d be fine.

Fair enough. I actually don’t know that much about her or where her recipes come from. I just find that the recipes she uses on her cooking show and that are attributed to her on the website are consistently good, for quick day-to-day meals (not gourmet fare). I guess I’m not surprised that she’s given all those recipes by real chefs because she’s all telegenic and stuff.

I’m genuinely curious about all the hating on Rachael Ray. Is she truly a bad chef–or is it the incessant perkiness that drives some people up the wall? If only or mostly the latter, the response seems out of proportion to the offense.

In a rilly, fuggin’ huge skillet, saute 20 pounds of onions, 4 pounds of garlic, a market basket full of parsley, sage, rosemary and Michoacan cannabis, a couple of cups of nice tellicherry black peppercorns and a handful of those nice, pink ones–salt to excess.

Add 2 gallons of pulque and 1/2 gallon of a nice Herradura tequila.

Bring the mixture to a rolling boil (do not ihnale fumes) and add 5 pounds of Chorizo and 20 pounds of ground burro. Simmer this mixture for 24-36 hours–adding tequila as required to keep the mixture from becoming too dry–. Add 2 cases of Dos Equis and allow to cool to room temp. Strain out solids (reserving them for making meatloaf for the local LEO picanick) and fill clean Mason jars; cap and store in a cool, dry place.

Re: Rachel Ray. Ms. Ray is involved with a dog food company that makes dried food that is not too horrible. I make my dogs “wet” food and biscuits, but he likes to pretend he’s crunching the bones of small neo-cons, so I gotta give him the kibble. He loves the stuff and, so long as he’s happy, I’m happy.

The Food Network has been steadily declining for quite a while now. There were always some questionable shows, but at the beginning they had a lot more solid shows about actual cooking, and how to do it, than they do now. I’m a serious foodie, but can’t watch most of what they broadcast these days (Health Inspectors? Please!).

I will confess a certain fascination with Chopped, although the hyped competitive aspects of it are annoying It’s fascinating to see what creative minds can come up with in a short period of time, given the bizarre combinations of foods they are often required to use.

Rachel Ray is the cooking equivalent of a newsreader, and I don’t personally see anything wrong with that as long as misrepresentation is not occurring. I just don’t know why she became a thing in the first place.

Actually, the only person I can remotely bear to watch preparing food (I mean, WTF, really, it’s like watching golf) is Alton Brown, as he is amusing, if excessively Christian-y.

My dear reviewer:
Could you stop making every other sentence a rhetorical question? Would it be possible to give actual information instead? Are you aware that you’re not sounding snarky? Would it surprise you to learn it makes you sound like a fool?
Should I be thanking you in advance?
Dingo(?)
——-
PS: Yes – the food sounds revolting, overpriced, and I understand that it’s served by dolts in a hideous environment in which I wouldn’t force my worse enemy to eat, but the review topped the venue in the ‘GRRRRR’ stakes.
I’d give it to aspiring food critics as an object lesson in how not to write a restaurant review.

“The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mailbag and it was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.”

Is she truly a bad chef–or is it the incessant perkiness that drives some people up the wall?

For me, it’s her volume. She never speaks; she just shouts. Constantly! She can’t stand to allow more than three seconds of silence at a time.

The Food Network has been steadily declining for quite a while now.

I used to be a big fan of Food Network Canada and I still like some of the Canadian cooks (Michael Smith, Laura Calder, Chuck Hughes, Anna Olson…) who actually show me how to cook things.

The Food Network’s decline has cooincided with the rise of ‘reality’ television, which means people unnecessarily pitted against each other in contrived competitions and then squashed one at a time in the most humiliating way possible. That’s entertainment!

I’ll resume watching the Food Network when they free Alton Brown from that horrible “Iron Chef” nonsense and send him back to making funny but informative shows about cooking.

I’ll third that.

Although I enjoy Iron Chef, Good Eats is absolutely my favorite cooking show. My wife and I knew we were going to try living without cable, so I TiVo’d thirty-something episodes of Good Eats in order to have a library I could enjoy in our post-cable lifestyle.

Six months in, it’s worked out well.

And in regards to Guy Fieri, I guess I’ll be a dissenting voice. I’ve never viewed him as a chef, but instead as a TV show host. Most TV hosts seem to be overly corny, so I can accept Guy’s style as an unfortunate pre-req for the job.

Do I like Guy Fieri? No. But I don’t dislike him either. And my default position is to wish people well, so I hope he has continued success in his career.

I have to say, for all I hate Fieri’s cooking show, cookbooks, and general being, I do like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

Being the host of DDD is a dream job. I have been to two of their featured restaurants in the Hampton Roads area. One is a 50’s diner in Norfolk that is quite good and historically interesting in the sense that the portions have not changed since the 50’s. That is, the burgers (for example) are great but they are fantastically small by today’s standards. It is easy to see why we are a nation of fatsos. The other DDD featured restaurant was a fried chicken place in Portsmouth VA that was horrible.

“And in regards to Guy Fieri, I guess I’ll be a dissenting voice. I’ve never viewed him as a chef, but instead as a TV show host.”

I never saw Bob Villa as a qualified craftsman/builder (and from all accounts of people I know who worked around him, he’s also a douchebag) but I really didn’t give a fuck as long as “This Old House” actually dealt with, like, building issues. When it turned into a fucking travelogue (and brought Marian Morash–the producer’s wife–on the show to do whatever the fuck she felt like doing) and product showcase I quit watching it. Ditto for every show that’s currently out there. There not about building, they’re about scamming people and flipping houses or doing horrid “makeovers”.

Food shows should be about FOOD. News shows should be about NEWS. Maybe FuckTheNew’sCorpse will be getting into food shows, now. I can just see it, “Fried Chicken the way Obama’smama woulda made it, IF HE WAS A REAL MURKKKIN!”.